African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 11(36), pp. 8774-8783, 3 May, 2012 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJB DOI: 10.5897/AJB11.2130 ISSN 1684–5315 © 2012 Academic Journals Review On the scale-neutrality of transgenic seeds: Micro-level access, impacts and implications for further research Edilegnaw Z. Wale Discipline of Agricultural Economics, School of Agricultural, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X01, Scottsville 3209, South Africa. E-mail: walee@ukzn.ac.za. Accepted 27 January, 2012 For transgenic seeds to contribute to agricultural development and food security, transaction cost- related factors, gender issues, institutional constraints and smallholder farmers’ preferences will have to be addressed. In the light of the prevailing controversies and debates, this paper partially reviews the transgenic seeds’ impact on the literature to assess their scale neutrality and identify the methodological and research issues for future impact studies. In terms of methodology, selection bias, lack of explicit attention to risk, endogeneity, dependence on single season data, comparing average outcomes for users versus non-users, and using recall survey data are identified as the most important weaknesses of the existing impact studies. Further issues include heterogeneous impacts on rural poverty and farm income, scale-neutrality, dis-adoption, desirable and undesirable features of transgenic seeds, and their potential crowding-out effect on transgenic seeds on traditional varieties. The paper has argued and presented the reasons for non-scale neutrality of transgenic seeds, at access and impact levels. Integrating transgenic technology into the African rural development agenda needs addressing agricultural biotechnology transfer mechanisms sensitive to gender, farmer heterogeneity and income distribution for which there is a need to create public-private partnerships as these criteria are less appealing to the private sector. Key words: Transgenic seeds, heterogeneous impacts, scale neutrality, methodological issues, policy options. INTRODUCTION Africa is behind the rest of the world in terms of developing and applying agricultural biotechnology. Genetically modified (GM) products are the outcomes of biotechnology. Biotechnology is any technique that uses a living organism or substance from those organisms to make or modify a product, improve plants or animals or develop micro-organisms for specific uses (Persley, 2000). The phrase ‘transgenic seeds’ is used in this paper to refer to seed products of agricultural biotechnology. Only South Africa and to a lesser extent Egypt and Burkina Faso have commercially applied this technology thus far (mainly for cotton, soybean and maize). The most important rural development challenges facing South Africa to which agricultural biotechnology can contribute (Cloete et al., 2006) or worsen (Swaminathan, 2000) the situation include: 1. Rural poverty and food insecurity: It is estimated that about 70% of the rural people in South Africa are poor (Thirtle et al., 2005); 2. Income inequality: South Africa has one of the most unequal income distributions in the world with a Gini coefficient of about 0.6 (Thirtle et al., 2005); 3. Population growth: Increasing population leads to increased demand for food; 4. Biodiversity loss: This results in increasing damage to the ecological foundations of agriculture (Wynberg, 2002), and 5. Natural resources and environmental degradation: One of the main challenges in South Africa is the integration of environmental concerns with economic growth (Blignaut